Online Safety Bill

Dean Russell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)]

I had the great privilege of sitting on the Joint Committee on the draft Bill before Christmas and working with the Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), fantastic Members from across both Houses and amazing witnesses.

We heard repeated stories of platforms profiting from pain and prejudice. One story that really affected me was that of Zach Eagling, a heroic young boy who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy and who was targeted with flashing images by cruel trolls to trigger seizures. Those seizures have been triggered for other people with epilepsy, affecting their lives and risking not just harm, but potentially death, depending on their situation. That is why I and my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb)—and all members of the Joint Committee, actually, because this was in our report—backed Zach’s law.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Ten-year-old Zach is a child in my constituency who has, as the hon. Member said, cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and he has been subjected to horrendous online abuse. I hope that the Minister can provide clarity tonight and confirm that Zach’s law—which shows that not just psychological harm and distress, but physical harm can be created as a result of online abuse and trolling—will be covered in the Bill.

[Dean Russell]

My understanding—hopefully this will be confirmed from the Dispatch Box—is that Zach’s law will be covered by clause 150 in part 10, on communications offences, but I urge the Ministry of Justice to firm that up further.

One thing that really came through for me was the role of algorithms. The only analogy that I can find in the real world for the danger of algorithms is narcotics. This is about organisations that focused on and targeted harmful content to people to get them to be more addicted to harm and to harmful content. By doing that, they numbed the senses of people who were using technology and social media, so that they engaged in practices that did them harm, turning them against not only others, but themselves. We heard awful stories about people doing such things as barcoding—about young girls cutting themselves—which was the most vile thing to hear, especially as a parent myself. There was also the idea that it was okay to be abusive to other people and the fact that it became normalised to hurt oneself, including in ways that can be undoable in future.

That leads on to a point about numbing the senses. I am really pleased that in debating the Bill today we have talked about the metaverse, because the metaverse is not just some random technology that we might talk about; it is about numbing the senses. It is about people putting on virtual reality headsets and living in a world that is not reality, even if it is for a matter of minutes or hours. As we look at these technologies and at virtual reality, my concern is that children and young people will be encouraged to spend more time in worlds that are not real and that could include more harmful content. Such worlds are increasingly accurate in their reality, in the impact that they can have and in their capability for user-to-user engagement.

I therefore think that although at the moment the Bill includes Meta and the metaverse, we need to look at it almost as a tech platform in its own right. We will not get everything right at first; I fully support the Bill as it stands, but as we move forward we will need to continue to improve it, test it and adapt it as new technologies come out. That is why I very much support the idea of a continuing Joint Committee specifically on online safety, so that as time goes by the issues can be scrutinised and we can look at whether Ofcom is delivering in its role. Ultimately, we need to use the Bill as a starting point to prevent harm now and for decades to come.